Have you purchased a song on iTunes, but Capo can't access it?

Support
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We rely on the Music app to provide us with information about the songs in your library, and often it lies to us.[1] Here are a few common situations that will create problems for you, and how you can work around them:

Apple Music has not replaced its local copy of the song with the DRM-free version you purchased

Behind the scenes, the Music app sometimes doesn’t replace its locally-downloaded copy of the song (from Apple Music) with the DRM-free version. Even if you didn’t ask the Music app to download a local copy of the song for offline streaming, it sometimes does that anyway. Even worse, the Music app might not show that you’ve downloaded it, but it has a local copy anyway!

There are two ways to fix this:

1. In the Music app:

  1. Locate the song you’re trying to load into Capo
  2. If you see the icon indicating it’s been downloaded,[2], tap the “…” icon to show the menu.
  3. Tap “Remove…”, then tap “Remove Download”.
  4. Tap the “…” icon again, then tap “Download”.

If you don’t see the icon indicating your song has been downloaded, start with step 4, then do steps 2-4.[3] it and see if Capo has access to the song. If Capo’s still giving you trouble, repeat this (remove the download, then re-download.)

  1. You may have to remove the local download before trying this (as above), but you might not. Head to the iTunes Store app,

2. In the iTunes Store app:

Before you continue, you may have to check that the Music app doesn’t have a downloaded copy of the song already.[4] Follow steps 1-3 in the Music app directions above.

  1. Tap on the “More” tab at the bottom of the screen
  2. Select “Purchased”, then “Music”
  3. Locate the song that you are trying to load into Capo
  4. Tap the download button at the right of the song

When you’re done following the steps in either situation…

Capo should now load your song without any errors.

If it still appears that the song is unavailable,[5] quit and re-start Capo, and maybe the Music app as well (for good measure).[6]

If you did everything above, and it still doesn’t work, then please us know below, or send us a support email with as much information as you can provide. As far as we know, every song you can purchase today on the iTunes store is DRM-free, but there may be exceptions to that “rule” that we are not aware of.

  1. OK, that’s little a bit of an exaggeration. The real problem is silly, technical nonsense that confuses our users more than they need to be. ↩︎

  2. The icon is a small gray circle with a down arrow inside it. It appears just before the ‘…’ icon. ↩︎

  3. That’s right—you’re downloading, deleting, then re-downloading the song. This extra step will clear out the situation where the Music app has already stored a copy of the song without you asking it to do so. ↩︎

  4. We’ve usually had success by skipping this bit, but can’t promise anything. ↩︎

  5. Yeah, we know, Apple makes this process ridiculous. ↩︎

  6. Sometimes the Music app doesn’t immediately update the information that it shares with us, and a quit/re-start does the trick. ↩︎